Blues Brother Tie

The Bluesier Side of Jazz for Piano and Keyboard

Order # HAD 1412UPC: 6 63389 11412 9Suggested Retail Price: $26.95

by Andrew D. Gordon

The Bluesier Side of Jazz by Andrew D. Gordon was inspired by the piano students he teaches at The Cornel School Of Contemporary Music at Shepherd University in Los Angeles. As with many students that come from a classical background (including himself) it is a difficult transition to learn to play Blues & Jazz. When a musician improvises they usually play a variety of riffs or phrases that they have developed and learnt over a period of time and can access these phrases instantaneously whatever key they are playing in to create a seamless improvised solo from the phrases they have learnt.

Andrew's idea for this book is to create phrases or riffs over two measures of various Blues progressions. He sub-divided each of the 12 Bar Blues progressions used in this book (the chord progression for Watermelon Man is a 16 measure progression) into six sections (two measures each) and within each of the six sections created four different phrases or riffs so that the student has a choice of four different phrases to play over every two measures. They can then create a solo based on which phrase they choose for each two measures. By breaking down these phrases to two measures each, he has found that the students have an easier time of learning to improvise than by trying to transcribe a whole solo from an audio recording or leaving them to their own devices in trying to play a solo based on the Blues scale or other related scales.